~ Settled back in Jersey, heart still in Ireland….

Do Not Go Gentle

We meet most Sunday mornings. She is much older than me but I don’t care. Funny how she always seems surprised as I gasp ‘Good morning’, as if she’d never seen me before. ‘Good morning’, she answers back. Then we are apart again.

Shuffling along with her stick, skirting Grouville Common, set on a destination unbeknown to me. To her daughter’s house maybe. A cup of tea and a chat. Looks forward to seeing her grandchildren.

She certainly has a past, a long one too. What stories could she tell if I were to fall into conversation with her? Of her Jersey childhood, the village school, visits to the nearby beach, a weekly visit to the town of St Helier. Then the arrival of the Germans and the five long years of hardship before the Liberation. Love, marriage, a family. Maybe none of the above. I know nothing about her.

Perhaps she was a champion swimmer as a young lady. She wishes someone would ask her about her medals. Now she walks to keep fit, unbelieving that her body could ever let her down.

And does she know, or care, that this puffing stranger is also raging against the dying of the light? One day, sooner or later, we’ll meet no more.

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30 thoughts on “Do Not Go Gentle”

Hello Sue 🙂 Hope you’re well. Yes, that beach shot was from Saturday, and I ran that way along the road on Sunday. What a great website you have, though horses aren’t really my scene. Nice to hear from you.

Very well thanks Roy, hope you are too. The bookclub I’ve just joined is studying The Guernsey Literary and Potato peel pie society at the moment, (think I’ve got that long winded title right!) Have fun seeing in the Spring weather, we have just had so much heavy rain parts of Auckland flooded.

One of my favourite poems. I hope you aren’t really focused on raging against the dying of the light, Roy. Or is that just how you feel at the end of a run … when you’re gasping?! I enjoyed vicariously cogitating on what stories this woman might have. Everyone has a lifetime of stories; perhaps she’s been waiting for someone to listen to some of them! Thanks for getting your readers thinking.

Thank you Jane. Too many people pass on with their stories untold. Often their papers and records are dumped as ‘rubbish’. We never listened to them properly. History is the minuscule amount of stuff that is written, recorded and preserved. There’s so much we’ll never know.
Thankfully we’re becoming better at capturing much more and technology is making it easier.

I read your comment about murdering her husband and stashing him in the cellar – you certainly have a writer’s mind (in fact I was thinking along similar lines)! Great story and sometimes it best to just imagine what she does and where she goes, although I’m sure her life story would be amazing xxxx

Funny those relationships we have with strangers. I wrote a story once about an old woman who used to feed the pigeons every day, imagining a rebellious, colourful life nobody would guess at. I no longer see her, so I fear she’s let me down first….

Yes, YES. I want to know her story now too, thanks to you and your meandering thoughts. Yes, she wants you to know, if only in the fiction you draw from wondering about her life. And I hope that when I’m elderly, and walking my same walk day after day, a “young” man who passes me by will realize that I have a lifetime of incredible stories inside my old body.

Hello Pam 🙂 For sure I’m getting more and more curious about people’s back stories. Strangers are usually two dimensional to us – we haven’t got the capacity to know everything about everyone. But every stranger has a book waiting to be written about them, stories even they may have forgotten about. We’ll see about this lady.

Gosh I love the writer’s curious mind in you Roy. I often am curious about people I see too. I hope you will be meeting her for a long time yet. The fact that you are both walking is a positive step in longevity. Beautifully written and had me transfixed wondering who she is and whether she was a character out of a story.